Review

Yelawolf is one of the many pieces of proof that show that people who diss the dirty south scene in rap are just as ignorant as some of the artists from the area act, and his 2010 mixtape Trunk Muzik seems to keep pumping out those solid hits to make full-fledged New Yorkers who’ve never heard of him feel legitimately bad. Why? Because Trunk Muzik thirteen tracks of pure solid rap music from what seems like a mad chemists lab of rap experimentation.

To imagine what how horrible Trunk Muzik should be, imagine this. Imagine a verbalistic, white rapper, sort of like something one of those guys from Def Jux or Anticon, or maybe even early Eminem. Now give him a slight southern drawl, make him rap about ignorant stuff while still keeping that verbalstic attacks at hand, and give him a bunch of synth beats. Sounds horrible, right? Well, unbelievably, everything that sounds absolutely crazy and shouldn’t work here absolutely does with flawless results. “Good To Go” features a some glorious spacey synths and ridiculously energetic drums courteously of Jazze Pha, and not only does Yelawolf rip it with miraculous speed rapping flows and references to dirty south greats, but does the unbelievable and outshines Bun B in the process. “Speak Her Sex” features lazy, waddling Nintendo synths and off kilter drums, and the drifting nature of the cool instrumental allows Yelawolf to drop some ill punchlines and similes (“Robbin these rappers like me and Irene/ opps that’s dick in jane/ opps, now it’s my dick in jane/ I took a shot of jack d, and I threw the dice on the board like it was a Christmas game”)

The tracks seem to consistently prove that, oddly enough, Yelawolf is one of those guys that could save the dirty south from losing relevance in ‘hip-hop’ conversations. Trunk Muzik is one of those rare mixtapes that actually fit together pretty well as an album, and sound perfectly constructed. The lazily, stumbling synth instrumentals, shifting from keeping with Yelawolf’s aggressive flow, or slowing down a bit to let him spit ill lyrics, Trunk Muzik creates a relaxed, easy environment for Yelawolf to explore his hip hop topicality, going from coups, fame, and even relationships (“Love Is Not Enough” is actually quite touching), and never sounds like it’s a label push.

Trunk Muzik shows a rapper that absolutely SHOULDN’T be comfortable with being a dirty south rapper, both lyrically intelligent and ignorant at the same time, and yet so does. Yelawolf and Trunk Muzik are both surprise successes